Entertainment

How a Week-Long Game of Pokémon Became a War of Religion

What started as a relatively small, crowdsourced play-through of Pokémon has become something of a global cultural experiment — spurring fan-created mythology, a battle of political systems, and even warring religions.

On Feb. 13, an anonymous programmer startedTwitch Plays Pokémon. Viewers of the gaming service Twitch would enter various commands — up, down, left, right, a, b — in a chat window; those commands would be performed in the classic Nintendo game Pokémon Red and Blue.

At first, this experimental interactive game had a fairly small audience of around 1,600 people, but it has since amassed a following of over 100,000 viewers, becoming one of the most popular streams on the streaming website, Twitch.

The goal of the play-through was to see if the group could progress through the storyline of Pokémon Red and Blue — which involves defeating the leaders of gyms in eight cities, followed by the best of the best, the Elite Four. But the more people that joined the experiment, the more narratives and fan art were created around characters — such as a Charmeleon creature randomly named “ABBBBBBK” by player input. It is now affectionately known as “Abby.”

The Mythology of Twitch Plays Pokémon

Most notably, the viewers created a pseudo-religion around one plot point in the game where the player must choose between two Pokémon fossils: the Helix Fossil or the Dome Fossil. This choice between the two fossils, which can later be revived into actual Pokémon, led to a schism in the viewership.

In Twitch Plays Pokémon, the Helix Fossil was chosen, and after repeatedly clicking on the item to no effect, the viewers decided the Helix Fossil was in fact a benevolent god watching over this chaotic play-through. Repeated clicking on the Helix became known as consulting the god. In similar semi-serious fashion, players declared that the Dome Fossil was the devil.

Alex Rose, an indie-game developer from Manchester, UK, and a moderator of the subreddit /r/twitchplayspokémon on Reddit, explained the religious split has also become a way of identifying how a viewer wants to play through the rest of the game.

“Domers are people who want to complete the game,” Rose, a self-described Domer, told Mashable. “We want to do it as well as we can, and the fun is being part of the group collective and working together. Helixers are people who want to enjoy the randomness of the game. They want to form religious cults around nuggets and moonstones. They want to lose battles and get put back hours for the great story. They’re content creators, and they’re mostly responsible for the story that’s been weaved.”

Now full of prophets, false prophets, temptations, redemptions and sacrifices all with their own fan art interpretations, this growing mythology has helped convert viewers into dedicated fans of the stream. Take Jon Howell, a business consultant in Baltimore, Maryland, who has been heading to /r/twitchplayspokémon to help explain and document the fan-made culture.

“The pseudo-religion is one of the main reasons the concept has hooked me,” Howell told Mashable. “The fact that, in about 5 days, a community has created a rich and developed system of interconnecting theologies from the chaos of this game is astounding to me.”

The Debate Over Anarchy and Democracy

Viewers have also been engaging in an epic political debate. In an effort to get the game to go faster, the creator of Twitch Plays Pokémon offered a new mode: Democracy. The original mode —now dubbed Anarchy — had the game register any and all commands made in the chat and reproduce them in sequential order.

Instead, Democracy mode aggregates commands. In other words, users vote on what to tell the game to do at any given moment, with the most popular command being implemented.

A screenshot of the Twitch Plays Pokémon stream where "x (araggbaj" the Oddish is battling a wild Gastly, highlighting the stream of commands and the battle between the Anarchy and Democracy modes.

Proponents of Anarchy mode were upset with the changes; they felt the draw of Twitch Plays Pokémon was the chaotic fun of thousands of players all implementing contrary commands. In response, the creator developed a tug-of-war system — so now viewers also battle for the “political” mode they want to play in, simply by saying “anarchy” or “democracy” in the chat.

When a certain political mode reaches the necessary amount of votes, the game will automatically switch into that mode.

Currently Anarchy mode is winning, despite (or because of) the fact that it makes the play-through incredibly more difficult. Its supporters have aligned Anarchy mode with the good Helix Fossil religious sect, referring to Democracy mode as “Domecracy” thanks to its supposed ties to the evil Dome Fossil.

Now the Anarchists have gone further, discovering ways to prevent progress being made in Democracy mode by filibustering the Democrats. If the game tips into Democracy mode, the Anarchists start repeating the command “start9” — prompting the game to hit the “start” button nine times.

“A lot of the time, Anarchy is more fun when walking between places,” said Rose. “I honestly wouldn’t mind permanently keeping it on either mode, but I think letting the players choose when they want to use each mode is genius, and a fantastic idea.”

At time of writing, Twitch Plays Pokémon has been going on for six days. Viewers have been able to beat four of the eight gym leaders so far. According to the stream’s statistics, Twitch Plays Pokémon has hit a peak audience of around 120,000 viewers on Feb. 18. More than 4,500,000 buttons have been pressed by more than 400,000 people.

If you've missed out on any developments in the game, /r/twitchplaysPokémon has created a live feed detailing every major, and completely random, event.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.